


The Precedent

by azenki



Series: Chain Reaction [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Warning: no graphic mentions of violence, all the canon characters listed have a very very minor role, but this is a fic about the mass genocide of a group of people, the murder isn't described in detail but it is the main theme of the story, this is essentially just lore for the au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24551743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azenki/pseuds/azenki
Summary: It begins with the airbenders.Or: a hundred and fifty years ago, the benders were wiped out. This is how.
Series: Chain Reaction [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1756933
Comments: 17
Kudos: 302





	The Precedent

**Author's Note:**

> if you didn't read the tags, here's a warning: while this fic is not tagged as graphic depictions of violence, the main theme is about the mass genocide of a group of people. There is no violence described in detail, but please be aware that genocide is a very large part of this fic.  
> Also, Chapter 9 of Cause and Effect will be posted really, really soon :)

It begins with the airbenders.

Well, no. It begins long before that—thirty-three years before, to be precise. It begins with the formation of a group called the Equalists. It begins with words being exchanged in taverns and rumours in the back alleys of cities too big to not have secrets. It begins when the word _bender_ starts to be spoken with a certain kind of hate, that casual contempt that drips off the tongue.

It begins with the posters, then the novels, then the speeches. It begins with what historians will call propaganda, and it begins with the spreading of the Equalists until they have thousands of members in every corner of the world. It begins when parents start looking at each other with fear as their four-year-old child proudly displays a roughly-bended chunk of earth.

It begins when the cities start laying down new laws. The first law is identification: a badge, pinned to the collar, colour-coded for the bender's element. It isn't enough, the Equalists say. The second law is a curfew; no benders are to be seen outside from sundown to sunup. It isn't enough, the Equalists say. The third and final law is that no benders are to be seen outside at all. And even then, the Equalists say, it is not enough.

It begins when the Peacemakers are established, a force made up entirely of nonbenders. They know more than they should know. They track down rogue benders who step out of line. Benders who do not follow the law are taken by the Peacemakers, and they do not come back.

It begins, as all things do, with little more than a whisper.

But the slaughter, the killing, the first bloody blow— _that_ begins with the airbenders.

They're monks, after all. They're pacifists. They have no military force; why would they? Air is the freest of all four elements, allowing its users to choose what they wish to do with it, and they have chosen peace. 

The Equalists have not.

The Equalists have chosen equality, but equality is a two-character word. Somewhere along the way, those two characters got mixed up, and _equality_ has come to mean _blood,_ and _death,_ and _kill._

It begins with the airbenders. It doesn't stop.

* * *

When the Air Nomad Temples have been remade into the Air Nomad Graveyards, the Equalists set their sights on the Poles.

Earthbenders are stubborn. They don't give up easily. The firebenders, too, are a problem; how does one trap a bender who can make their own fire?

But the waterbenders—the waterbenders are fluid and soft and easy to pull apart. The waterbenders can be put in dry steel holds. The waterbenders can be given so little of their element that they have to decide between bending it and drinking it, and in the end drinking always wins. Survival will always matter more than escape, because no one can escape if they're dead.

So the Equalists take their Peacemakers and their laws and their non-elemental weapons, and they march on the Poles. They are welcomed with open gates and open arms; here, even at the end of the world, their thirty-three years of hatred have spread. No one wants to protect a bender, and those who do are shunned. 

When the Equalists come, those who protect benders are no longer shunned. They're killed, instead. There is no sympathy for a sympathiser, as ironic as that sounds.

They don't kill all the benders, at least not right away. They would never kill so many in front of an audience. No, that would be a horrible move; instead, the benders are led away for their crimes. Those crimes are: being born too powerful. Being born like _this._

The waterbenders are put in prisons all over the world. These prisons are never near water, and the cages hang suspended in the air. In some of the prisons, the worst prisons, the benders are...questioned. 

_("Surely, icebreaker, you must have made some deal with a spirit to gain the unholy power that you have. How evil were you, in your last life, to make a bargain as filthy as this?"_

_She spits in his face, or tries to. There isn't enough water left in her mouth for her to do it properly._

_"Don't call me icebreaker," she snarls like a wild thing, which she is, now. All things become wild when they're locked up and starved. "My name is Hama, you dirty beast. Or do you not even have the brains to address a lady by her name?"_

_"Animals don't have names," the guard replies, and backhands her across the face.)_

* * *

By the time the canals in the Poles are still and silent with no one there to move them, the earthbenders have gone into hiding.

They've gone underground, the Equalists laugh, as they begin taking out shovels. They've gone underground, like the moles that they are, but there is a limited amount of earth.

One by one, the benders are weeded out. They're turned in by neighbours, and colleagues, and so-called friends. A few are turned in by their own families, who are too poor to afford the destruction that a search by the Peacemakers would cause.

They fight. Of course they fight. But the Equalists are smart. They question the earthbenders they already have, about what secret circles they have and how to get messages through to those in hiding. The earthbenders, as always, are stubborn, but a sharp metal blade can be very persuasive.

Once the Equalists have their information, they put it to good use. They send messages. They put up posters. They set up false safe camps in the desert, luring in refugee benders with promises of a haven.

Unless they've been trained to bend it, most earthbenders don't have the best control over sand. They have even less control over it when they're trussed up and gagged in a wagon lined with metal, hands cuffed behind their backs.

As more benders are found, the forests begin to dwindle. Wood is a limited resource, and just one earthbender's cell requires a lot of it. Too much of it. They can't afford to keep putting benders in cells.

So they stop putting the benders in cells. They start putting them in graves instead.

To save resources, they say. To be efficient.

And then they start running out of space to dig the graves. Necessity requires that they become even more efficient.

Mass graves can hold up to two hundred bodies. It's very efficient indeed.

* * *

The firebenders are the hardest to get rid of. They know what's coming, and they rise to fight it; even the nonbenders, hateful though they are, won't turn in any benders. It's not honourable to rat someone out, no matter what your opinion of them. It's not honourable to send someone to their death, and the Fire Nation is all about honour.

Firebenders need the sun the same way airbenders need the sky. They know that the Equalists will be searching for them in places with sunlight and heat and humidity, and so they avoid these places at all costs. But firebenders simply aren't cut out for living in caves and dark forest huts; they grow weaker the longer they're removed from their source of energy. 

So, when the Equalists come for them, they are far from prepared.

Fire is based on emotion, and fear is not a good emotion to draw your weapon from. Their flames come weak and sputtering, fizzing into smoke before they can do more than slow the Equalists down. But fear isn't the only motivator, and anger, on the other hand, can be a very good weapon indeed.

The firebenders last much longer than the others, if only because they simply refuse to give up. Every time the Equalists declare all bending dead, a sighting comes in the next day about how someone saw a burst of unnatural fire upon a nearby mountaintop. Some of the younger ones are already used to assimilating into nonbending society, and they manage to keep their cover until someone sees them lighting their candles with their hands instead of rocks.

Slowly, the firebenders shrink in number. This time, the Equalists don't even bother with cells. They go straight to a watery grave; digging mass graves is a lot of work, and it's not like there are any waterbenders left to get offended over the treatment of the ocean. 

And then the Equalists find the Sun Warriors. They find the dragons.

They kill the dragons.

The last firebender dies not three days later.

* * *

It ends with an airbender.

Well, no. It ends forty-two years after the last benders die in their cells. It ends when the Equalists are overthrown, and people begin to realise the kind of slaughter that has transpired. It ends when people begin to mourn, when benders' families and friends begin to make their voices heard. It ends when the laws are lifted, and the rumours stop, and the novels and posters are taken and burned in a fit of rage. It ends when the world realises it was wrong in the worst way possible, and grieves for it.

It ends too late. 

But there is an airbender, both horribly young and horribly old, frozen in suspended animation for a hundred and fifty years. There is an airbender who knew a man named Kuruk. Kuruk was arrogant and pompous and one of the greatest waterbenders of his time, and he had been visiting the Air Temple to flirt with the nuns when the sound of marching footsteps first echoed up the mountain. 

Kuruk had been Aang's friend, and when he heard the footsteps he'd grabbed him and run. He was a waterbender, and Aang was an airbender, and they both knew what the Equalists thought of people like them. When Kuruk had seen the ships, gleaming darkly in the polar sun, he'd turned to Aang and said, "I'll come back for you when the coast is clear," and he'd frozen his twelve-year-old friend in a block of bright blue ice. He'd hidden Aang behind a row of towering glaciers, and then left to meet the Equalists.

Kuruk did not come back. 

Aang does. He comes back a century and a half later, completely alone and disoriented, waking up between two Water Tribe siblings who have never seen an airbender before. He comes back as the last of a race that should be extinct, because all the Air Nomads had been benders and all the benders had been killed. He comes back, but Kuruk doesn't, and neither do the rest of the benders who died at the hands of the Equalists.

But Aang is here, and Katara is here, and they're both bright-eyed and young and hopeful. So they take some food, and some water, and they take Sokka, too, setting off on a Water Tribe boat to see who else they can find.

The scars are still there. They'll never not be there. Katara will never lose the feeling of growing up a miracle and a freak. Aang will never know what it's like to grow old among his people.

But maybe they can try to heal the scars. A little bit at a time. Baby steps.

And, just like that, it all begins anew.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I did use the Equalists from LOK, extremely vaguely. Have I seen LOK? No, I have not.
> 
> On a more serious note, I do hope that the topic of genocide was handled okay. In case it wasn't already clear, a lot of the things mentioned were based off real-life genocides such as the Holocaust. If something was portrayed in an insensitive or downright offensive way, please let me know and I'll fix it to the best of my ability.


End file.
